The 2nd ASEAN Reader

Sharon Siddique and Sree Kumar

Publication Year: 2003

The Second ASEAN Reader is a sequel to the first ASEAN Reader, published by ISEAS in 1992. Some of the classic readings from the original ASEAN Reader have been incorporated into this new compilation, but the majority of the readings cover the events from to1993–2003. During this decade ASEAN as an organization was revamped, and its membership increased from six to ten. ASEAN has had to carve a niche in the proliferation of regional associations and bilateral relationships which mark the accelerating era of globalization. The economic pivot point for the decade was certainly the 1997 Asian crisis, while the war on terrorism has had a ripple effect on intra-ASEAN co-operation. ASEAN’s resilience and ability to adapt has allowed the organization to navigate on a steady course into the 21st century.

Cover

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

The Second ASEAN Reader has been
designed to be either a stand-alone
volume, or a companion volume to the
(first) ASEAN Reader, published by ISEAS in
1992. The first volume contained excerpts
from ASEAN-related scholarly publications,
from the early days of regionalism up to the
1992 ASEAN Summit. ...

Director's Message

ASEAN was founded in 1967; ISEAS in
1968. Thus ASEAN has always been a
focal point for ISEAS’ Southeast Asia vision.
This has been reflected, through the years,
in numerous seminars and meetings on
ASEAN, and the sponsorship of many
scholars researching ASEAN topics. These
activities have resulted in hundreds of
ISEAS publications, ...

Foreword: New Challenges for ASEAN

No one in the 1950s expected that anticolonialism
in Southeast Asia would
give way to anti-communism and that this
would be followed less than 40 years later by
the triumph of capitalism. That last triumph
did not mean that there would be greater
certainty in the region. ASEAN has had to
adjust to a world dominated by a single
superpower. ...

Member States of ASEAN

Section I: ASEAN: Institutional Redesign and Dynamics

Introduction

The history of the member states of
ASEAN lends clues to how political
systems evolved from the earliest times. The
defining feature of such systems of the
ancient times was the mobilization of
socially definable loyalties for a common
purpose rather than specifying a territorial
scale of such activities. ...

1. Early Southeast Asian Political Systems

A remarkable development in Southeast
Asian studies since the Second World
War has been the steadily improving knowledge
of the region’s prehistory.’1 The best
known discoveries, made possible by
scientifically conducted excavations and
the tools of carbon dating, thermoluminescence,
and palaeobotany, ...

2. Post-Colonial Southeast Asia

Only twenty-odd years have elapsed since
Japan’s sudden surrender to the Allied
powers dramatically inaugurated the most
recent chapter in Southeast Asian history.
The decolonization process has, historically
speaking, barely begun, and it is therefore
difficult to know what on the swiftly
changing scene is ephemeral and what
destined to perdure. ...

3. Post-War Regional Co-operation

If there were a verb ‘to regionalize’ then a
dispassionate student of regionalism in
Southeast Asia might conjugate it thus: past,
imperfect; present, indicative; future, indefinite.
Regionalism in and/or for Southeast
Asia has passed through three stages
since 1945 and is still in the third stage. ...

4. The Formation of ASEAN

In 1967, the continually-escalating war in
Vietnam, together with China’s “Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” dominated
the consciousness of Asia. U.S.
military involvement in Vietnam had been
accelerated since her air-bombing of North
Vietnam in February 1965 and she made use
of military bases in Japan, the Philippines,
and Thailand. ...

5. Institutional Framework: Recommendations for Change

The gradual and piecemeal development
of the Asean institutional framework
and the emphasis on the consensus method
for decision-making clearly reflects the
cautious approach of the member governments
to regional co-operation, which has
so far been mainly political. ...

6. The Structure of Decision-making

The national bureaucrats who work on
ASEAN affairs might appropriately be
called the “decision-makers” of the regional
organization, for it is they who carry out the
day-to-day chores — formulation of policy
and viewpoints, attendance and deliberation
at meetings, negotiations and discussions,
and implementation of decisions. ...

7. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations: Challenges and Responses

8. ASEAN Institution Building

The institutional structure of Asean in the
third transition beginning from 1992
reflects a process of incremental modification
of a structure largely traceable to
the Bali summit and the selective inputting
of recommendations from the subsequent
task forces on institutional reform. ...

9. ASEAN During the Crisis

There appears to be a serious gap in
perceptions between ASEAN officials
and the public in and outside ASEAN on the
efforts made by that institution to overcome
the economic crisis that has affected all its
members, albeit in varying degrees.
Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia have been
hit hardest; ...

10. The "ASEAN Way"

Acentral characteristic of the “ASEAN
way” has been its cautious attitude
towards formal institutionalization.1
Singapore’s Foreign Minister S. Jayakumar
has called this ASEAN’s predilection for
“organizational minimalism”.2 Robert
Scalapino has described it as a process of
“soft regionalism” ...

11. ASEAN and Non-Interference

The principle of non-interference is pervasive
in ASEAN documents. The founding
Bangkok Declaration of 1967 indicated a
desire for regional co-operation in the spirit
of equality and partnership and for regional
peace and stability through respect for the
principles of the U.N. Charter. ...

12. ASEAN: An Image Problem

There is no way of getting around it and
little point in being excessively diplomatic
about it. This has been one of the
most difficult, if not downright unsuccessful,
years for the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) since the triumph of communism
in Indochina in 1975, if not since
the founding of ASEAN itself in 1967. ...

13. Intramural Challenges to the "ASEAN Way"

At the pre-APEC Business Summit organized
in Kuala Lumpur in November 1998 the
American Vice-President repeated the standard
argument that democracy is the key
foundation of prosperity because investors
put their money and their faith in democracy.
Implicitly, Al Gore also contended,
however, that anti-government protests in
Malaysia, ...

14. Strategic Centrality: Indonesia's Changing Role in ASEAN

Indonesia’s future domestic political configuration
will have another effect on
ASEAN. The Asian financial crisis has
revealed a good deal of government business
collusion and this has undermined
the theory of “authoritarian advantage”
whereby non-democratic governments have
greater power to mobilize resources. ...

Section II: Membership Expansion on a New Political Canvas

Introduction

ASEAN has been, for most of its
existence, an association of states
focused on countering the threat of being
swamped by the travails of Indochina and
Myanmar. There was always the view that it
was not a security organization, but one
built on the political realities of being
neighbours in a possibly unstable region. ..

15. Intra-ASEAN Political, Security and Economic Co-operation

The emergence of ASEAN as a political
community in the course of the dramatic
maneuvers over Cambodia has tended to
overshadow the more substantial progress
achieved in bilateral political cooperation
among the five partners. Since 1967,
assiduous efforts have been directed toward
structuring procedures ...

16. ASEAN and Indochina: The Dialogue

The so-called ‘new thinking’ in Soviet Asian
policy, enunciated by Gorbachev at
Vladivostok in July 1986, has led to a rapid
improvement in Sino-Soviet relations. In
the short space of 18 months, all three of
China’s long-standing obstacles to a normalisation
of Sino-Soviet relations were
removed. ...

17. Challenges for Society and Politics

The enlargement of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to
include all the ten Southeast Asian countries
in 1999 caused a number of concerns
among analysts and observers of ASEAN
affairs. Among their concerns are the implications
of enlargement for the solidarity,
cohesion, and effectiveness of the
Association, ...

18. Expectations and Experiences of the New Members: A Vietnamese Perspective

In 1995, Vietnam, owing to the changing
international and regional political climate,
was able to join ASEAN as a full member.
This was a considerable achievement, given
the political and security concerns between
the original ASEAN members and Vietnam
during the 1970s and 1980s over the
question of Cambodia and other related
issues. ...

19. Between China and ASEAN: The Dialectics of Recent Vietnamese Foreign Policy

There was, of course, some opposition to
Vietnam’s membership in ASEAN, especially
by Thailand, because of a fear that Hanoi
was all too eager to use ASEAN as a club
against China. One Vietnamese scholar/
official recognized in 1994 that “in the
short period after joining, it would be
difficult for Vietnam to take the lead ...

20. Vietnam and Its Neighbours: The Border Dispute Dimension

From the above analysis of Vietnam’s border
disputes with its neighbours, it is evident
that Hanoi is pursuing a fairly consistent
policy on how to settle them. Vietnam
favours formal negotiations, stressing the
fact that the border disputes must be
handled through peaceful measures and
that the concerned countries must refrain
from the use of force. ...

21. ASEAN Enlargement and Myanmar

During the months of July and August 1997,
the government-owned newspapers carried
a series of boxed inserts entitled “Facts
about ASEAN” to highlight Myanmar’s
admission to the regional grouping. One
stated that “Myanmar, through ASEAN, can
now meet the groups wishing to pose a
threat to her collectively, ...

22. The ASEAN Troika on Cambodia

The five founding fathers of ASEAN
(namely the Foreign Ministers of Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore
and Thailand), in issuing the ASEAN
Declaration in Bangkok in August 1967,
envisioned it to encompass all ten countries
of Southeast Asia under one sub-regional
organisation. ...

23. The Greater Mekong Subregion: An ASEAN Issue

In general, ASEAN’s economic processes
are in place. The challenging task is to
develop a sustainable and reliable programme
for delivering development, in
addition to improving capital and credit
transfers to the developing members. Apart
from border issues, and sporadic security
hot flashes along the borders, ...

24. The Security Challenges in the GMS

The Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS)
comprises the Lao PDR, Cambodia,
Vietnam and Myanmar, which are the new
members of ASEAN, and Thailand, an
original member of ASEAN and the Yunnan
Province of China. These countries share
the Mekong River which is the world’s 12th
longest river. ...

25. The GMS Co-operation within the ASEAN Context

During the Cold War period, the
Mekong River was formally referred to
as a dividing line between the communists
and the non-communists in the continental
Southeast Asia. On one side, it was the lower
riparian countries of Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia and on the other side, Thailand,
which stood alone by itself. ...

26. Impact of ASEAN Enlargement on GMS Countries

Out of the six participating countries in
the GMS, Thailand is an original
member of ASEAN, while Vietnam, Laos,
Myanmar and Cambodia are new members.
This section will look at the implications and
impact of new members joining ASEAN/
AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area) on the
GMS, especially co-operation in infrastructure
development and finance. ...

27. Neighbourhood Watch and the East Timor/Aceh Crises

Indonesia is clearly a linchpin in the
ASEAN neighbourhood watch grid. Its
geopolitical importance to regional states
and to the major powers stems from the
location of several key straits — transit
passages and choke points — within its
waters. It is a littoral state, together with
Malaysia and Singapore, of the Malacca
Strait. ...

Section III: Society, Culture and Religion: Ingredients for a New Tapestry

Introduction

From its inception, social development
has always been a feature of the ASEAN
agenda. ASEAN’s social development
programmes have covered such areas as
health, women, children and youth, and
education. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and
1990s, the programmes were managed by
the ASEAN Committee on Social Development
(COSD). ...

28. Managing Mobilization and Migration of Southeast Asia's Population

In the 30 years since the founding of
ASEAN, the demography of Southeast Asia
has changed profoundly in many ways.
Fertility and mortality levels have fallen
dramatically, urbanisation has continued
at a rapid pace, ageing has become a significant
issue and family structure and functioning
have been transformed. ...

29. Media in Southeast Asia

Reviewing all the available literature on
media in Southeast Asia risks cramming too
much (both in quantity and diversity of
topics) into the limited confines of a book
chapter. It is likely to produce a long list of
broad categories, too summarily treated to
be of any analytical value.1 ...

30. The Role of Education in ASEAN Economic Growth

Now that Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and
Cambodia have been accepted as members
of ASEAN, generalisations about ASEAN
are much more difficult to make, and this is
no less true of education than of economic
growth or political matters. The original
ASEAN five countries and Brunei have all
achieved something approaching universal
primary education,1 ...

31. Climbing Up the Technological Ladder

Simply stated, the dependency theory
maintains that growth and development in
the developing countries (the “periphery”)
is hampered by structural dependence on
the advanced, industrialised countries (the
“core”), although the degree of such constraints
varies widely. ...

32. Human Rights and Regional Order

The ASEAN states consider the rising prominence
of human rights in recent years
as a direct result of the end of the Cold
War. The anti-communist thrust of Western
policy, which tolerated blatant human rights
abuses by pro-Western Asian governments
in the past, is no more. ...

33. Promoting Human Rights

The fact remains that two key planks of
the ASEAN governments’ position on
human rights — non-selectivity and “situational
uniqueness” (the need to take cultural,
political and economic differences
into account) — are mutually exclusive. ...

34. Human Security in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia

What, then, of the development of human
security in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos?
Cambodia is now, at long last, a case for
guarded optimism. The logic underlying the
organization of elections in the country
has the intention to bring about social
and political commitment to the construction
of the rule of law ...

35. Role of Nonstate Actors in Building an ASEAN Community

The activities of ASEAN-ISIS have contributed
significantly to the formation of a
sense of community among the policy elites
and intellectual leaders in the region by
establishing reliable channels of communication
and, thus, enhancing mutual
confidence. ...

36. Ethnicity and Religion in Social Development

Islam is ASEAN’s largest religion, though
it is not predominant in all six countries.
Next are Christianity, Buddhism, and the
Chinese religions based on varying mixes of
Buddhism, philosophy, and folklore, most
notable in Malaysia and Singapore. The
noteworthy point is that ASEAN subscribes
to religious tolerance, ...

37. Asia: Al Qaeda's New Theatre

As many as three dozen Middle Eastern,
Asian and European terrorist groups trained
in the Syrian-controlled Bekaa valley in
Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s. In the
early 1990s Afghanistan replaced Lebanon
as the major centre of international terrorist
training, and by October 2001, forty foreign
terrorist groups were operating there. ...

38. Islam and Society in Southeast Asia after 11 September

These regional terrorist networks indicate
the dimensions of the new security
challenges facing Southeast Asia. The
transnational al-Qaeda terrorist network will
be the major security threat to governments
in the region over the next decade. Because
of its regional network, Southeast Asia will
remain a major centre of al-Qaeda activity. ...

39. Islam in Southeast Asia: At the Crossroads

Since the 11 September 2001 terrorist
attacks in the United States, a media
blitz on terrorism has generally portrayed
the world’s one billion Muslims as increasingly
homogenous, uncompromising,
and radicalized. These post-11 September
pundits, who have only recently discovered
the Muslim world, ignore historical contexts, ...

40. Building Knowledge Societies: ASEAN in the Information Age

“Building knowledge societies” is, in fact,
a subject on which ASEAN itself has
placed the highest priority. There are, at this
time, few things more urgent or more
important for ASEAN — or for any nation
or region — than building “knowledge
societies.” ...

41. ASEAN, the Wider Region and the World: The Social Agenda

ASEAN as a regional organisation does
not have a social agenda. It may have
some idea of the sort of economic tenets
it should follow as it pursues economic
prosperity; it may have some notion of the
political institutions that should develop
within the region; ...

Section IV: Economics, Modernization, and Crisis: AFTA and After

Introduction

ASEAN’s economic record has been, at
best, one of mixed results. In most
instances the verdict has been that it could
have been better. There had already formed,
in the previous decade, a view that
expectation and implementation gaps were
significant in the group. ...

42. The ASEAN Model of Regional Co-operation

More than a decade after the Bali
Summit, ASEAN’s achievements in
the major area of regional economic cooperation
have been uneven and modest. Its
trade liberalization program, which lacks
sufficient breadth and depth, is still ineffective
in terms of restructuring ASEAN’s
trade pattern and shifting it toward a greater
regional focus, ...

43. The ASEAN Free Trade Area: The Search for a Common Property by Lee Tsao Yuan

The Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) entered the decade
of the 1990s faced with two new political
challenges. The fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989 and the end of the Cold War meant
that security issues would, in most parts
of the world, no longer be of paramount
importance. ...

44. Co-operation and Institutional Transformation in ASEAN: Insights from the AFTA Project

Apart from the initial agreements made
among the ASEAN governments in 1992
that launched AFTA and the Summit
Declarations of 1995 and 1998, all other
agreements signed between the ASEAN
member governments are formal and
binding, requiring domestic ratification by
national legislatures (Table 1).1 ...

45. AFTA and the Politics of Regional Economic Co-operation

There were three levels at which there was
cause for concern that AFTA might be
derailed. First, at the level of the ASEAN
leadership, advocates of the agreement were
worried that changes at the top would
jeopardize the implementation stage. This
fear was highlighted in Thailand when, after
the March 1992 elections, ...

46. Intra-ASEAN Economic Co-operation

There are two approaches to strengthen
intra-ASEAN economic co-operation.
First is the encompassing idea of a free trade
area, with the understanding that all else
will follow. Second is the question whether
the free trade area is sufficient to enhance
the larger market forged through intra-
ASEAN trade and investment, ...

47. The Expansion of AFTA

The decision to establish AFTA was taken at
the summit meeting of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) heads
of state in January 1992. All six members of
ASEAN (the ASEAN-6) would participate. At
inception, the ASEAN-6 countries agreed
to a deadline of 2008 for reducing tariffs to
0–5 per cent. ...

48. AFTA = Another Futile Trade Area?

In discussing intra-ASEAN trade, we need
to exercise some caution. The role of
Singapore as an entrepot port tends to
distort the picture somewhat. A large proportion
of Singapore’s exports to the
ASEAN neighbours are really re-exports of
products from outside the region. ...

49. Foreign Direct Investment in ASEAN: Can AFTA Make a Difference?

Until 1992, regional trade preferences
were not an important item on the
policy agenda of ASEAN. Although ASEAN
adopted a Preferential Trading Arrangement
(PTA) at the Bali Summit in 1976
(becoming effective in 1977), this initiative
had little impact on regional trade because
of its narrow commodity coverage ...

50. Privatization and Deregulation in ASEAN

Privatization and deregulation have
attracted increasing attention in
Southeast Asia, especially among ASEAN
countries in recent years. In 1985, the Asian
Development Bank (ADB) held a
conference in Manila, Philippines, on
“Privatization Policies, Methods and Procedures”. ...

51. ASEAN and the Asian Crisis

Processes of economic cooperation are
central to the institutionalist argument. It
rests on the axiomatic premises that
economic cooperation produces gains for
all and enhances national welfare. Trading
states are therefore interested in a peaceful
international environment. ...

Almost all the Asian developing countries
which attracted significant capital inflows
faced many of the positive and adverse
macroeconomic consequences.1 On the
positive side, acceleration in the rate of
growth of GDP is evident for several countries
during the capital surge phase. ...

53. ASEAN and the Idea of an "Asian Monetary Fund"

There are a number of crucial questions to
address when considering the idea of an
AMF. First, what would be the purpose of
such a fund? Should it be a supplement to
the IMF, or should it support a particular
“Asian” approach to economic development?
Which country or countries would
lead such an organisation? ...

Section V: Geopolitics, Defence and Security

Introduction

In the early years, Cold War rivalries were
the defining element for ASEAN. Security
among the newly independent ASEAN
members was inter-state, giving primacy to
the principle of non-interference within
ASEAN, and a preoccupation with balancing
regional and global superpower interests in
the region. ...

54. Is ASEAN a Security Organization?

The Association of South East Asian
Nations was conceived as a means of
promoting intra-regional reconciliation in
the wake of Indonesia’s confrontation of
Malaysia. Its founders exhibited also an
interest in the management of regional
order. ...

55. A Post-Cold War Architecture for Peace and Security

The shape of the securiy architecture in
the post-bipolar world will, to a large
extent, be determined by our assumptions
of what security entails. The premise of
structural realism, the influential doctrine
behind international power politics, is that
the state is a unitary actor seeking to survive
in an essentially anarchical international
system.1 ...

56. ASEAN and the Southeast Asian Security Complex

In the aftermath of ASEAN’s success — no
doubt aided by the end of the Cold
War — in pressuring Vietnam to leave
Cambodia and thereby making a solution to
the Cambodian problem possible, some
have predicted that ASEAN would lose its
raison d’être and that its solidarity and
cohesion would be weakened. ...

57. The ASEAN Regional Forum

58. The ASEAN-ISIS and CSCAP Experience

ASEAN-ISIS is the most important and
visible peace and security-related track two
mechanism in Southeast Asia.1 Initiated by
the Indonesian Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), it was
organized on 3–4 September 1984 in Bali,
Indonesia. ...

59. Evolution of the Security Dialogue Process in the Asia-Pacific Region

Official dialogue, often referred to as Track
One dialogue, is confined to officials
of governments. Non-official dialogue,
conducted by non-governmental organizations,
should in theory be independent
of governments, but in reality there are
often varying degrees of governmental
influence, representation or support. ...

60. New Security Issues and the Impact on ASEAN

It can rightly be said that for ASEAN
countries, many non-traditional security
issues have long been their concerns with
emphasis on freedom from want, similar to
the UNDP’s definition of human security.
This is evident in their concerns with developing
their economies. ...

61. The Limits of Conflict Resolution in Southeast Asia

From both the theoretical and practical
points of view Southeast Asia ranks as one of
the more complex regions, resulting in
difficulty in establishing conceptual, much
less policy-relevant, security arrangements.
Neither the United States nor the Soviet
Union regards the entire region as an area
of vital security interest. ...

62. Alternative Security Models: Implications for ASEAN

Southeast Asia’s post-war history is marked
by the preoccupation of the elite with
sustaining their political power (an intrastate
security preoccupation) and by minimising
their sovereignties’ vulnerability to
external aggression (an inter-state security
orientation). ...

63. Disputes in the South China Sea: Approaches for Conflict Management

Four areas are in dispute in the South China
Sea: the Paracels, which is contested by
China, Taiwan and Vietnam; the Gulf of
Tonkin, disputed by China and Vietnam;
Pratas Island and Macclesfield Bank,
contested by China and Taiwan; and the
Spratlys, contested in whole or part by six
littoral parties: ...

64. Integrating ASEAN and Fragmenting ARF in a Subregional and Regional Context

The centripetal force within the ASEAN is
being counter balanced by the centrifugal
force of the ARF. The subregional ASEAN
states have to apply their survival skills
among the regional Great Powers. ...

It should be no less importance in that the
inter-Korean relationship also entered an
entirely new phase. Within the Korean
Peninsula there is a new atmosphere and
movement of the glacier towards a thaw
in inter-Korean relations. Faced with the
spectre of political isolation and a rapid
economic decline in the 1990s, ...

66. Asia-Pacific Security: Strategic Trends and Military Developments

The Korean peninsula remains the key focus
of any assessment of security threats in
the Asia-Pacific region simply because the
peninsula remains one of the most
militarized places in the world. Along its
side of the 38th parallel, North Korea
deploys the world’s largest commando force
of more than 80,000 men ...

67. The Interrelationship between Global and Regional Security Issues

There is a sense that ASEAN is being
eclipsed by global events and factors
beyond the control of individual member
states even when they happen within the
region. ASEAN has, in the meantime, been
trying to find its centre in its interactions
with the multilateral world. ...

Section VI: ASEAN and Multilateral Relations

Introduction

There is a sense that ASEAN is being
eclipsed by global events and factors
beyond the control of individual member
states even when they happen within the
region. ASEAN has, in the meantime, been
trying to find its centre in its interactions
with the multilateral world. ...

68. ASEAN and the North-South Dialogue

What relevance do North-South issues
have for ASEAN and what is ASEAN’s
stake in the North-South negotiations? I
submit that not only has ASEAN a vital stake
in them, but it has also a crucial role to play
both in the North-South dialogue and in the
recovery of the world economy. ...

69. The Parallel Tracks of Asian Multilateralism

As the Asia-Pacific region approaches a
new millennium, regional international
relations are moving away from Washingtoncentered
bilateralism to a more diffuse
multilateral structure. This new structure
consists of both economic and politicalsecurity
components, which currently run
along separate tracks. ...

70. ASEAN and the International Trading System

Political considerations led to the persuasive
conclusion that intra-ASEAN relations must
be reinforced. However, because of ASEAN’s
great dependence on the international
market, its overall orientation in trade must
remain global. ...

71. EU-ASEAN Relationship

Regional integration or co-operation is not
an end in itself. A preferential reduction of
barriers to trade was originally designed as a
fall-back position when in the early part of
the twentieth century Europe was unable to
push along progress in non-discriminatory
liberalization, ...

72. The Asian Crisis Seen from Europe

The crisis of Asian financial markets has
been an exogenous shock to the Asia-
Europe Meeting (ASEM). The meeting, with
its various subsidiary conferences and
forums, has been designed to cope with
policy-induced economic and political impediments
to bilateral transactions and to
remove trade obstacles and investment
barriers. ...

73. The ASEM Process and Co-operative Engagement in the 21st Century

Asean regionalism — and for that matter,
any broader coalition of forces at the intraregional
and interregional levels — offers
the best prospects for regional stability,
development, security and prosperity for
Southeast Asia. ...

75. APEC and ASEAN: Complementing or Competing?

The establishment of APEC in 1989 itself
was a testimony to the growing interdependence
of the Asia-Pacific economies.
Increased economic interdependence
implies increased friction, and regional
issues call for regional solutions. Hence the
need for a Pacific body that would serve as
a forum for airing grievances, ...

76. APEC and ASEAN: New Roles, New Directions

The APEC Roundtable sessions were
notable for the contrasting views of the
two papers presented: while one set out the
positive effects of a grouping like APEC,
the other argued that all regional groupings
were by definition sub-optimal. ...

77. The Asian Crisis and the Adequacy of Regional Institutions

If a case has been established that the
East Asian financial crisis has produced
an increased demand for more effective
regional institutions, brief consideration
should be given to factors that will influence
whether regional institutions will be able to
provide appropriate responses to meet
this demand. ...

78. AFTA and NAFTA: Complementing or Competing?

A first step in addressing the future relations
between AFTA and NAFTA is to look at the
similarities and differences between them.
Their common membership in APEC is an
important similarity in providing a forum
for dialogue and setting joint priorities for
trade relations. ...

79. Regionalism and Economic Integration in East Asia

Over the last fifteen years or so regionalism
has become increasingly
prevailing in the world economy. After the
first wave of regionalist tendency during the
1960s, the number of regional integration
agreements (RIAs) has again surged
especially since the mid-1980s. ...

80. ASEAN Policy Responses to North American and European Trading Agreements

The initial concerns of Southeast Asian
political leaders over the formation of SEM
and NAFTA appeared to concentrate on the
fear that the new trading blocs would raise
tariff barriers against external trade. Under
GATT rules, existing tariffs should not be
raised when free trade areas are formed, ...

Section VII: Significant Others: ASEAN and Nation-States

Introduction

In the globalizing world of the twenty-first
century, characterized, as it is, by the
proliferation of multilateral agencies,
institutions, commissions, organizations,
associations and communities, we tend to
forget that nation-states are still important
actors on the international stage. ...

81. ASEAN’s Engagement with the U.S. in the 21st Century

There is a general recognition in post-Cold
War Southeast Asia that the United States as
a benign superpower or least unacceptable
external power (depending on one’s perspective)
has a crucial strategic role in
maintaining a favourable balance of power
and external influence in the wider Asia-
Pacific region, ...

82. Is There a U.S. Strategy for East Asia?

Imminent security risks in the Asia-Pacific are
concentrated in Northeast Asia where the
United States deploys most of its western
Pacific armed forces and where its most
unambiguous defence treaties apply.
North Korea’s defiance of nuclear nonproliferation
norms in 1994 and China’s
provocative naval exercises over Taiwan in
1996 ...

83. The United States and the Aborted Asian Monetary Fund

The abortive exercise, in the wake of the
Thai and Korean currency crises, to set
up an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) is instructive.
While it drew material and rhetorical
support from a range of regional
states, the United States refused to support
it. ...

84. Trends in U.S. Politics and Their Implications for America's Asian Policy

It is clearly impossible to consider all the
important developments that might occur in
Asia or in U.S. politics that could influence
America’s Asian policy. The 1988 presidential
election and the implications of
the turmoil in world financial markets
beginning in the autumn of 1987 add new
uncertainties to the scene. ...

85. ASEAN-China Relations Turn the Corner

ASEAN-China relations have come a long
way in the past decade and there have
been remarkable advances in economic,
political, and security cooperation this year.
Relations between China and ASEAN were
initiated only in July 1991 when Beijing
began to attend the ASEAN Post-Ministerial
Conference (ASEAN PMC) ...

86. ASEAN’s Role in the Chinese Foreign Policy Framework

In an era of economic reforms and its
opening up to the external world, China
wants to secure a peaceful international
environment to concentrate on economic
development. Its strategy in the Asia-Pacific
region has been consistent: to stabilize
China’s periphery, and treat the region as
China’s base. ...

87. ASEAN-China Trade and Investment Relations

ASEAN and China are not each other’s
main trading partner, but the bilateral trade
has been growing rapidly in the past decade.
ASEAN-China trade grew at 20% a year
during the 1990s and by over 30% in 2002.
ASEAN is China’s 5th largest trading
partner and account for 8.3% of China’s
total trade in 2000. ...

88. China-ASEAN Free Trade Area

Before the 1990s, there was no official
relationship between the ASEAN as a
grouping and China, although China had
official relations with certain individual
ASEAN member states on a bilateral basis.
From the late 1980s, China intensified its
efforts to establish diplomatic relationship
with all the remaining ASEAN states ...

89. The Rhetoric of Australia's Regional Policy

From a realist perspective, Indonesia is the
key to Australia’s defence. It commands the
nation’s northern approaches from which or
through which any conventional military
attack on Australia would be launched. A
stable and friendly Indonesia is therefore
crucial for Australia’s security. ...

90. The ASEAN-10 and Japan

Areform-oriented China should be wel
comed not only by ASEAN but also by
Japan. If, as Hans Maull puts it, “reconciling
China with international order represents
the biggest political challenge that the world
is facing today” (1997, 466), then engaging
China in regional as well as international
affairs peacefully and incrementally benefits
enormously both ASEAN and Japan. ...

91. Outlook for Japanese FDI in ASEAN

According to the survey by the EXIM
Bank, the motivation of Japanese
corporations to undertake FDI in the
medium term (up to fiscal 2001) has
declined (Table 1). The proportion of
respondents who see investments increasing
in Asia in the medium term has declined,
and the decline is particularly steep for
investments in ASEAN. ...

92. ASEAN’s Role in Integrating Russia into the Asia-Pacific Economy

Whenever Asia Pacific observers contemplate
engaging Russia economically,
attention invariably veers toward Russian
Asia. Since three-fourths of the former
Soviet Union’s territory was located east of
the Ural Mountains, it was both a European
and an Asian state. ...

93. ASEAN in India's Foreign Policy

Slowly but surely, ASEAN is emerging as
central pivot in the Indian view of Asia
and its future, and essential to the construction
of a security order that will be in
India’s interests. This is not only because
the view of the Asia-Pacific as a zone of
increased threats, ...

Section VIII: The Changing Landscape: ASEAN Going Forward

Introduction

What type of institution will ASEAN
become? It is clear that, over the past
three decades, ASEAN has insisted on the
principle of organic growth. ASEAN leaders
have resisted following a model. They have
repeatedly stated that ASEAN will not be a
Southeast Asian EU. ...

94. ASEAN Towards 2020: Strategic Goals and Critical Pathways

The founding fathers of Asean who met
in Bangkok a generation ago had a
vision for our region, which was called
‘Southeast Asia’, which hopefully in the
decades ahead will be called ‘the Asean
Community’. ...

95. The Evolving Regional Role of ASEAN

During the three decades which have passed
since its formation, both ASEAN and its
regional context have changed. In that
period, the Association has demonstrated a
facility for adaptation. The decisive point
of adaptation occurred with the entry of
Vietnam which marked a qualitative change
in composition. ...

96. The Future of ASEAN

The trend towards the deepening of
ASEAN’s co-operation in a wide variety
of areas including the security and economic
fields, expansion of its membership,
and its increasing role in Asia-Pacific affairs
will most likely continue in the years leading
to and beyond the turn of the century. ...

97. Prospects for Intra- and Extraregional Relations

The ASEAN-10 have the potential to
form a unified market with a population
of 480 million. Unity takes time,
however, because not only the leading
members but also the followers face a variety
of tasks in constructing sound economies.
As of early 1999, Cambodia had managed to
establish the Hun Sen government ...

98. Future Directions for ASEAN

But looking into the future, what do we
have to do? We have to make ARF
both meaningful and attractive. We have to
make all ARF participants feel that it is
worthwhile. I am not quite sure that they
will be feeling that as we move into the
immediate future. ...

99. ASEAN’s Past and the Challenges Ahead

Significant internal changes within countries
and external, global, and regional
changes, particularly in the last decade,
have created extreme and dramatic
pressures for ASEAN as a whole and for
each of its members. The greatest impact on
ASEAN has been the pressures resulting
from globalization. ...

100. ASEAN Vision 2020 and the Hanoi Plan of Action

Amidst the most serious crisis that has
faced the region, ASEAN declared its
Vision 2020 on 15 December 1997. This
broad vision aims to see ASEAN as a concert
of nations, outward looking, living in peace,
stability and prosperity, bonded together
in partnership in dynamic development,
and in a community of caring societies. ...

101. Overview of the Political Dimension of ASEAN's Security

On November 5, 2001 ASEAN leaders in
their Joint Action to Counter Terrorism
unequivocally condemned the terrorist
attacks of September 11 as an “attack against
humanity and an assault on all of us.” They
viewed terrorism as a “direct challenge to
the attainment of peace, progress and
prosperity of ASEAN and the realization of
ASEAN Vision 2020,” ...

102. ASEAN in a New Asia

The competition for scarce capital,
particularly in the form of FDI with its
employment creation, wage increase,
transfer of industrial technology, managerial
expertise, and marketing know-how as well
as stimulus to the development of local
supporting and domestic industries, is likely
to intensify in East Asia, ...

103. Towards an ASEAN Economic Community

The significance for ASEAN to make a
timely move towards deeper economic
integration is without any doubt. ASEAN
members have realized that they have a
much greater chance to maintain their
international competitiveness if they work
together towards the creation of an
integrated market. ...

104. Institutional Reforms to Achieve ASEAN Market Integration

So far, the ASEAN Dispute Settlement
Mechanism has failed to resolve trade
disputes due to its inability to enforce
agreements. Currently, the ASEAN
institution also lacks well-defined
regulations to safeguard the interest of
producers, investors and consumers. This is
likely to become more problematic as
economic integration deepens. ...

105. Region, Security and the Return of History

It is true that ASEAN faces important
practical tasks today, and that the builders
of ASEAN have given a lot of attention to
the slow and complex process of establishing
common norms, and a sense of community,
in the Southeast Asian region. And
in setting out to defend such processes as
being of vital and current importance, ...

Declaration on Terrorism, Phnom Penh, 2002

List of Abbreviations

Bibliography

The Contributors

Amitav Acharya is Deputy Director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies,
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is currently researching on
regionalism and multilateralism in the Asia-Pacific; Asian security; and international
relations theory. ...

The Compilers

Dr Sharon Siddique is a Director of Sreekumar Siddique & Co., a regional research
consulting firm. She specializes in policy design and strategy for public and private sector
corporation, and in risk assessments of countries in Southeast Asia. ...

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